I want to share with you the story of Jack’s Collage. Jack spent quite a few years in Kenya. He had some photos of various members of his family from then that he was keen to have a go combining into a family collage. The original photograph involved an incident when an elephant marched through the garden of where they were staying. This was a bit of a scary experience and one of his daughters, Ruth, freaked out and locked herself in the car and refused to come out. This story was the basis for his collage.
Jack had the idea of combining separate individual photos of his wife and children into one collage and had a good go at doing this. He had this great photo of Ruth sat on a wall and he put her sat on the back of the elephant. He was struggling with the different sizes of people in photographs and could change them in his photo viewing software so I suggested that we could take away the backgrounds and resize his family using Photoshop.
We worked together using a tablet and pen mouse which is a bit tricky and Jack had a bloomin’ good go at this. I finished them off at home and then on the last session Jack was the Creative Director, telling me where to put people and how big they should be. Cheeky Michael peeping out from behind the car was a big hit with the other members of the Tong Court Group
I think it’s a smashing collage. What do you think?

2 Responses to Jack’s collage

Yes, Really interesting Isn’t this what film directors call a story board? I think your narration really makes it something. Pictures on there own are one thing but the story can really developed. I suppose that it would really go somewhere with your altzimer groups. I understand that they get worried by the context of things ,whereas they are good at imagination. Given a picture of an everyday scene (without elephants) discussion on why do you think that person is doing that , what else could she be doing ?and so on I would imagine in a non threatening atmosphere you could build up a Harry Potter story or something equally as different.If you could record it all on video it might be fantastic, and if not what have we lost? Back to earth,our Thursday group will meet next Thursday ,are you still willing to offer the course that you were telling me about? Thanks for the Jack story Love Des Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2013 16:20:00 +0000 To: desmondhalestrap@hotmail.com

Hi Des,
Thanks for your response. Its certainly something to think about.
Just so you know, the groups actually aren’t ‘Altzheimer’s groups’ just gatherings of elderly people who are in some way isolated. In Jack’s case the sessions happened in one of the public spaces in the housing block that he lives in that is for older tenants. We have very deliberately not targetted the sessions specifically for people with Altzheimer’s as we want as many people as possible to come along and be involved; we see the sessions as being about starting up conversations and making friends whilst remembering, talking and doing ‘arty stuff’. In the case of the group Jack belongs to we had some lively discussions on music, cinema, racism, and going out and having a good time; from Charlie Chaplin through Marvin Gaye to Mrs Brown’s Boys!
Jack is a lovely man; he is eloquent, very aware of the world around him and learning to embrace new technology as a way of perserving his memories and photographs for his family.
I hope you’ll carry on following our blog Des
best wishes